Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Yay for more cherry-picked information.

    A substantial amount of evidence in Apple's complaint isn't addressed, but what's shown here throws a decent amount of shade and doubt.

    I have my popcorn ready for discovery. I hope it gets to that point, and I hope it proceeds to trial...

    by dannyw
  • Spot on, while reading this post I couldn't help be wonder "but what about the prototypes"?
    by random__duck
  • Corporate posting in the weeks immediately surrounding a legal case or ruling impacting tech companies is definitely my favorite brand of written text. Despite not paying full attention to EU legislation, I get reliably notified by Google about every tiny bit of antitrust from them posting a "Google brings millions into the EU's [field they are getting hit with antitrust in] ecosystem" vagueblog about it.
    by bulder
  • OpenAI knows that the court of public opinion is more dangerous than a fine from a real court.
    by simondotau
  • This feels like a trumpian tantrum from someone at openai. If they’re innocent, just win the lawsuit. Is this quibbling over details supposed to win the public over? Because afaik the public doesn’t know or care about this, and publicizing it just makes it worse.
    by kennywinker
  • This reeks of MAGAt communication style. It's tacky, classless, and completely irrelevant. Why is this a public blog post? It should be presented in a proper court, not on the internet
    by thiht
  • This is a company that's planning on going public soon. Imagine having your eggs in this basket, a basket which is already being zip lined across the Grand Canyon, and they're posting adolescent slam pieces about an ongoing lawsuit against the most valuable company in the world. The chance that any legal team has seen this yet has to be nothing because the second they see it they're going to scream to take it down. Even if OpenAI is right they look like amateurs.
    by CoolestBeans
  • Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out.

    I'm not Apple's biggest fan either (I got super upset when they conveniently wiped out all information about the person comiting suicide in one of their conference rooms and TMZ caught the police line and the sherif said "there is a gun, next to a dead person, we can't say much at the moment" and that was it). But it is unlikely that Apple would depriortize its brand on a fake story.

    by dbgrman
  • > the person commiting suicide in one of their conference rooms

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/apple-...

    by zombot
  • Can you clarify the information deletion/wipeout?

    RIP https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Ed_Mackowiak - Apple’s statement is linked there (and the bit about the woman in the Wiki might be outdated per TMZ correction https://www.tmz.com/2016/04/27/apple-campus-body-found-cuper... )

    by Barbing
  • Not buying it. In the end, OpenAI will throw these people under the bus and settle out.

    I think you're right, but let's not forget that Apple's goal isn't to protect themselves or to get a fat payout here. Their goal is to make their current employees less likely to leave for an offer at a company like OpenAI. This suit is telling everyone Apple employs "Hey, if you leave and we can find anything that looks a bit dubious, we're happy to screw you over."

    Apple aren't a loving and caring company that nurtures people. They're as ruthless as the next trillion-dollar unicorn.

    by onion2k
  • Despite whether what OpenAI alleges in the blog post is true or not, it's super odd that a company of their size would make a blog post about it.

    This looks like a company that's in a downward spiral. They're doing anything they can to attempt to salvage their reputation, maybe because when the court date finally rolls around it might already be too late.

    by tomburgs
  • > super odd that a company of their size would make a blog post about it.

    There is no "non-company blog" that wouldn't have to trace it back to OpenAI for verification anyway.

    This looks like a personal message to a specific audience, which may include the employees who are nervous about the company's positioning.

    It's unusual, but this is a blog. It's literally a web log and this is something that is going on with the company.

    by Supermancho
  • A few years ago Epic made a whole event out of deliberately breaking AppStore rules, writing blog posts and suing Apple.

    Public opinion matters, and narrative control is important if you don’t want to be perceived as “morally wrong company”.

    by tokioyoyo
  • Many years ago, back when I was a junior, I wrote something like this to my manager, complaining about another employee who has wronged me. I eventually decided not to send it because it just seemed so unprofessional.

    Wild that a company this big would post this on their official, public blog.

    by brap
  • I think this is a good way to vent. I've done that a few times. Typed up a long, angry rant. Only to delete it.

    Just make sure this is on your computer and not in a Slack DM or draft email. Don't want to accidentally hit send.

    by kilroy123
  • Yep, that's exactly what i thought at first look. This looks like one of those "letting-steam-off" mails you bin after thinking it through after cooling off.
    by bergen
  • This looks really bad for OpenAI. Honestly, do not post text messages on the web, you look like a messy bitch. At this point I really don't see this company going public under Altman, they're going to have to bring someone in to bring some professionalism here. Altman seems to have badly mismanaged pretty much every corporate relationship they've got going. OpenAI is such a natural fit to be a partner with Apple, yet somehow they've managed to completely burn those bridges in the most public and messy way possible.
    by Traster
  • When I look at the imessage conversation, one thing strikes me: that guy looks to be using the same icloud account he used when working for Apple with OpenAI. Is he using his own personal account? Why do both Apple and OpenAI allow that in the first place, this look so amateur. I would have assumed each company would have opened a different account for him and locked him when leaving.

    Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?

    by prmoustache
  • On the phone with some App Store support person I was told they don't like people having multiple Apple IDs. That's why I use my personal one for work as well.
    by h05sz487b
  • >Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?

    Yes.

    by klausa
  • Google allowed iMessage until a few years ago, when they banned all non-work messaging apps for exfiltration reasons. But you can still sign into a personal iCloud, which iirc you need to do for certain Mac App Store apps that are corp-approved.
    by frollogaston
  • > Is it standard practice at both Apple and OpenAI for employees to use their personal icloud account for work?

    This doesn't seem out of line with common practices at other big tech firms. If you go work at Meta, your personal Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp/Oculus accounts become intrinsically linked to your work login identity (though a few employees created a secondary account on of all those to prevent this).

    Although there are better controls than there used to be, it's not all that uncommon for sensitive work data to leak through this linkage into the public products...

    by swiftcoder
  • Somewhat relevant from yesterday.

    https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/03/apple-icloud-sharing-ex...

    by plodman
  • This is what gets people subpoena'd and their entirely private messages scrutinised. Happened to a lot of people, including a friend of mine who's affair became a matter of public record after his company was investigated for anti-trust issues. Super unprofessional and legally dangerous.

    I keep two phones, one for work, another for private life, and also two laptops for the same reason. The support for multi-identity is very inconvenient on apple[1], and very poor with whatsapp, signal and, really, most apps except for Google's. Shame, really, considering how well funded Apple and Meta are, and how little effort would be needed to implement the 80% of what people need: the ability to chat using different identities, without touching the rest of the OS wiring.

    [1] on macos, its possible to create users with multiple apple id associations, but not on iphone

    by aenis
  • I've heard multiple times directly from Apple employees that there is no way to login to iCloud on your work machine using a company-controlled account. Many people create new Apple ID's which they only use while working there, but others just use their personal iCloud accounts. You are, of course, not supposed to store company data in iCloud. But thanks to Apple's own efforts, it's difficult to use a Mac without being logged into iCloud (for example if you want to use the App store), and some data can easily spill into the iCloud account.

    If accurate, it is of course patently absurd that Apple has left this an unsolved problem.

    by jzl
  • Apparently Apple encourages their employees to use their personal iCloud accounts for company information, because their own OS doesn't support one iPhone, multiple iCloud identities.

    Source: https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/08/03/confidential-appl...

    So yeah.

    by dannyw
  • Setting aside the presented evidence, it feels weird for somewhat emotionally charged complaining like this to go on an official company blog. Companies are generally pretty tight-lipped about active litigation outside court documents, right? This just seems a bit amateurish, down to the title. Is public opinion about this case so important to them?
    by gr_norm
  • Is public opinion important to an industry whos future depends on datacenters being built for hundreds of billions of dollars, while the people all around them, whos utilities get more and more expensive in no small part because of datacenter buildouts, experience a constant cost of living crisis...

    ...yeah, that's a tough one...

    by usrbinbash
  • > Is public opinion about this case so important to them?

    They have no chance to win the court case, so public opinion is the only thing they have left to fight for.

    by progbits